Vodafone, Samsung win top Chiats

29 October 2013

NASHVILLE: Campaigns for Vodafone in Egypt and Samsung in the United States both won a coveted Grand Prix at the 2013 Jay Chiat Awards for Strategic Excellence, announced last night during the 4A's annual Strategy Festival.

A further four Golds, ten Silvers and eight Bronzes celebrating effective strategy were handed out at the event. Many of the winning entries are available on Warc, together with a selection of near-winners receiving an Honourable Mention from a judging panel chaired by Kristen Cavallo, chief strategy officer at Mullen.

The Grand Prix for Innovation was won by a campaign for Vodafone in Egypt, which was also awarded Gold in the Product/Service Creation category. JWT Cairo sought to promote micro credit recharge cards in a way that built on the local culture of shopkeepers often substituting small change with low-value items.

Effective positioning made micro charge cards seem higher value in comparison to the items often given in change and resulted in the average revenue per Vodafone user increasing by 7%.

And the Grand Prix for Strategy was won by Samsung and its agency 72andSunny for the US promotion of the Samsung Galaxy handset. "The Next Big Thing Is Already Here" campaign also scooped Gold in the National Strategy category.

Among the other top winners, Ogilvy & Mather's Bangkok office developed the Gold-winning idea in the non-profit category for an anti-smoking campaign by the Thai Health Promotion Foundation. This eschewed the usual scare tactics and instead put smokers in a situation where their own voice served as the warning message.

Adult smokers' responses to a child asking for a light for a cigarette and their explanations of why smoking was bad were filmed and shared on social media, increasing calls to the stop-smoking helpline by 62%.

BBH's New York office partnered with Deep Focus for a campaign that won Gold in the regional category, repositioning a shoe brand to appeal to a younger consumer.

Cole Haan developed a new footwear product targeted at busy New York City dwellers who needed comfortable shoes through 20-hour days. The campaign used a variety of unusual media, including night time food trucks and after-hours storefront rolling gates. Glow in the dark ink and appealing slogans encouraged people to photograph and share on social media.

"On the one hand, I'm very encouraged by the cases that I read," said Cavallo, reflecting on the judging of the 2013 entries. "On the other hand, I think that the job [of planning] has expanded, and so we always have a lot more work to do, and a lot more to get better at."